Neue Publikation in Academy of Management Learning & Education

14 Juli 2022

Giulia Parola, Dr. Wolfgang Spiess-Knafl (Munich Business School) und Prof. Dr. Julia Thaler haben ihren verfassten Artikel “The Butterfly Effect: How Academics’ and Practitioners’ Micro-practices Shape Turning Points in Response to Paradox” in der Fachzeitschrift Academy of Management Learning & Education veröffentlicht.

Abstract

One of the most frequent means of creating relationships between management research and practice is through collaboration. However, odds are that such arrangements will be filled with tensions that characterize the academic-practitioner gap. Against this background, our study investigates how academics’ and practitioners’ micro-practices shape turning points in response to paradox in six collaborations. We assume a process ontology and employ a comparative case study approach to explore the evolving relationships between academics and practitioners in collaborative settings through 34 semi-structured interviews conducted during the second year of joint work in a social program. Our findings demonstrate how small and seemingly mundane acts at the micro-level can affect turning points during the collaborative process by shaping their trajectories. With their day-to-day actions, our informants created significant change in organizational settings characterized by paradox. We found that multiple independent paths to generative responses to paradox exist. However, cultures of impactful collaboration do not evolve quickly and are not attributable to single discrete events. We propose a process model of turning points in academic-practitioner collaborations and offer implications for both theory and practice.